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Monthly Archives: March 2014

Sometimes it seems that the world has gone mad. Old battles, I thought won, reappear; and old enmities, I thought if not forgotten at least resolved, fester anew. We work passionately for peace, for the environment, to advance science and create a cleaner and fairer world for more and more people—and yet, we see that there are no final victories. The chaos is strong while order is quite fragile.

The old Cold War heats up and our former enemy, then quasi-ally, Russia, challenges our assumptions, crosses one border and threatens other countries—under the old pretext (which we should recognize because we used it) of protecting “lives and property” of fellow Russians. Iraq, never close to a democracy, has fallen into tribal, ethnic and religious chaos, with more people being killed now than in Saddam’s time. Afghanistan is a mess of warring tribes and ethnicities. Syria is bound in a fratricidal frenzy between brothers who do not recognize each other as brothers.

Asia is simmering with old feuds, and Americans don’t understand the history of animus between Japan and both China and Korea (North & South). The fight over two pieces of rock in the ocean is not about oil or gas but the long memories of Japanese atrocities before and during WWII. When Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits a Shinto shrine commemorating war criminals and moves to revisit Japan’s apology for the sexual enslavement of women in nations they conquered, the Asian mainland is upset and fears Japanese nationalism, re-arming and their nuclear capabilities.

Meanwhile, China supports the west against Russia. They will not endorse different ethnicities having the right to separate or have plebiscites, real or fake, that legitimize separation. The last thing they want is an example to the people of Tibet or the Muslim Uighur minority in their west.

Meanwhile at home, Darwin is once again under fire by people who are themselves the greatest argument that we have not evolved. Science is “only theories.” The earth is 6,000 years old, and women can’t be trusted with control of their own bodies. Not only is abortion under attack but birth control?! Climate change is deniable, and we deport people we actually need to do work we don’t want to do. And far too many people who are all for family values fiercely fight to break up the families and send parents back where they came from and keep their American-born children. Or even worse, deport children who came here before the age of consent and were raised here to countries they have never known,

There is just so much madness that one couldn’t be blamed for wanting to give up and fall into depressive apathy. Action seems, at times, too futile to bother with. You can’t be blamed for the feeling but inaction would be wrong. Now, more than ever, we need each other. We need people of good will from different religions, ethnicities and political persuasions to come together and align when we can find some agreement on the important issues before us. Now more than ever, we need communities of faith and secular groups to join forces to engage our wonderful, beautiful and fractured world.

We will not agree on everything. We may need to ally on one issue with good folks who completely oppose us on other issues. We need to reach across fissures and not allow them to become chasm that separate us, isolate us and therefore render us powerless.

How did fracking become the new “F” word? We need natural gas and oil, and they must be extracted from beneath the surface of the earth. When regular pumping methods no longer work, we need to put in some liquid to force the extraction—down to the very last drop of energy-filled goodness. Given our need for power, why is this controversial?

Let’s start with the fact that every kind of power has a negative environmental impact. Our question isn’t if there are environmental costs but what those costs are in environmental degradation that we’ll accept to fuel our life-styles.

Oil is dirty to extract and then leaks and spills. Broken pipelines and wells have hurt our environment and have decades-long harmful consequences.

Oil is far more expensive than it seems. We spend much of our military budget protecting areas that produce oil, and then we have to guard it in transit. Europe pays more for gasoline than we because we hide our subsidy in our military budget. Any thought that we would have gone into Iraq and Libya or spent billions in Egypt if there were no canal at Suez or no oil in the region?

However, oil is not the only problematic energy source.

Fukushima demonstrated the problems with nuclear power. Now having had 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, we should understand the downside of living with our friend the atom. It has an energy cost to mine and a greater cost to refine. Then you have a toxic and deadly substance that keeps giving its poisoned gifts for centuries. We still have no safe place to put our spent, but still deadly, Uranium and Plutonium. No one wants it in barrels. It’s not safe in cooling towers, and trucking it across states to bury in a mountain is proving problematic.

Falling water going through turbines to generate electricity seems like a good idea. It’s clean and relatively efficient. However, there’s considerable impact on the environment when we dam up rivers. Nor are most of us happy with high-tension electric lines running near our homes. Towers are unsightly, and the electromagnetism may cause serious health problems.

Wind power seems like a safe energy source, but it too is controversial. The windmills are not attractive in our mountain passes, deserts or in our shallow bays. Even Ted Kennedy fought to keep them out of Hyannis Port. They also impact, literally, our bird population, cuisinarting and pureeing our feathered friends into pâté.

Then there’s solar. It’s pretty much accepted on residential rooftops. However, when you try to install a solar array in the desert, where the sun does shine, some environmental activists recommend sticking them where the sun don’t shine. They are called ugly and may impede the migration of some desert denizens.

Swapping oil for electric energy for our cars isn’t yet a good choice either. Batteries are dirty and difficult to manufacture. But they are far worse to dispose of. Their impact in the form of toxic substances is considerable.

This seems to leave us with the once royal pretender King Coal. Dirty to mine. Dirtier to burn. It leaves ugly scars in the earth and uglier scars in the lungs of the miners. The high particulate smoke is a friend to no one.

So, here we are again, back to oil. Even with all its obvious problems isn’t fracking an acceptable risk? Can’t we have an intelligent, dispassionate conversation of risks and benefits–particularly given the problems with every other energy source? The answer is: I don’t know.

In order to have an intelligent conversation and make rational choices, we need clear information and enough transparency to build trust. And frankly given the PR spin and lies that have been associated with almost every accident–from the Gulf to Fukushima–trust is a problem.

The problem with fracking is that we don’t know exactly what they’re putting and pumping into the ground. It isn’t just high-pressure water. It’s all kinds of chemicals that will eventually find their way into the aquifer, our drinking water, our food chain and into us.

Many of the chemicals have not been studied as to their impact on us, or what concentrations in water are either harmless or deadly. Nor do we know what happens when these chemicals are in combination with other mystery chemicals.

The energy companies have disclosed that their fracking brews “contain or may contain”: Methanol, Naphtha, P-Mentha, Hydrochloric Acid, Hydrofluoric Acid, Ammonium Chloride, 2 Butoxy Ethanol and Aromatic Amines. MMMM. Yum. What could go wrong? These are the disclosed chemicals. The truly frightening part is their claim that they can’t fully reveal what they are putting into the earth because the formulas are “proprietary trade secrets,” like, I guess, the formula for Coke.

Locally, some of the wells set for fracking are as near as 111 feet from homes. Does this seem a reasonable risk or a sensible policy? Not without better information. We have bad choices and worse choices. Every source has an environmental and health cost. We have to pick, but intelligent choices are based on good information. This we do not yet posses.

After Odysseus poked a sharp stick into the Cyclops’s good eye (actually his only eye) the Cyclops demanded, not unreasonably, the name of his attacker. Being no fool, Odysseus answered “No Man.” When the now blind Cyclops staggered back to his buddies and cried for justice, they kindly queried him as to who had perpetrated this dastardly deed. He responded, “No man has done this to me.”

Would you think it fair or just to charge me with a crime and try to put me in prison for stealing No Thing or nothing? How would you monetize and value the nothing I stole? Where will you search for my now large supply of nothing that I’m hiding nowhere? When you own nothing, how can it (they!?) be taken away?

It’s a damn good thing I have an advanced degree in theology or these thought-problem questions would seem to make no sense. Luckily my vast knowledge and experience in studying and teaching theology allows me comfortably to move through absurdities and unreason before arriving at a coherent understanding of nothing, nothingness and non-being.

Shall we begin?

If they ever find out who stole $450 million dollars of Bitcoins, what will they charge them with? Would it be a felony? Well, only if the value were above a certain, but low, threshold. Surely then, stealing $450 million bucks would be felonious. Yes, certainly if you were stealing actual money. But what is the value of unstable, unregulated and uninsured electronic digits? What is the penalty for stealing, well, nothing? Maybe it’s an “intellectual property crime” because it seems to have little to do with regular bank robberies or even commodities fraud.

I don’t want to sound like Ron Paul here, but our currency, our so-called “hard currency,” is, in fact, faith-based. Since we back it neither with gold nor silver, we just have to believe it has some worth and will be accepted as “legal tender for all debts public and private.” To back up our faith in the once-mighty dollar, we breach the wall between church and state and imprint it with “In God We Trust.” Our bucks and sawbucks are solidly backed by nothing, but it is a much higher order of nothing than the Bitcoin, which was backed by absolutely nothing.

Are you seeing why philosophy and theology could come in handy here? The first great philosophical/theological controversy for the Greeks was whether God created the world out of nothing (Creatio ex-nihilo) or if God found stuff then molded and shaped it, thus creating some things out of no thing. Now are you seeing why Bitcoins and currency in general are more theological than, uh, actually logical?

Still, I believe more in our American currency. It is, in theory, kind of a share in the American economy. Bitcoins make the famously exploded bubble of Dutch tulip futures seem absolutely solid. So if I were to steal your imaginary currency and hide it in my vaporware safe, would you send me to a virtual prison to do theoretical time?

On behalf of America I want to apologize. We are truly sorry that you have to suffer from threats by Russia and Putin, that Crimea is already effectively occupied, and all we can do is promise you our sincere attitude of indignation. The truth is that we’ve got nothing. All we can do is speak loudly and carry not a big stick but a small twig.

Yes, I know we got you into this sorry mess by encouraging your revolt against the Putin puppet you elected president. But seriously, you should have known better. We encouraged East Berlin to rebel in the early 50s and when they did all we could offer was our heartfelt disapproval of Soviet Russian brutality. We promised help to the Hungarians if only they’d take steps for freedom and then watched apoplectically when Soviet tanks crushed them. Warmed by the Czech Spring, we extended our greetings to Dubcek and were appalled but passive when he was crushed. So, really, what were you thinking?

You know that we don’t want war. One, because we’re tired and out of both the will and the money. Two, because we know you’d be crushed in days. However, not even Putin wants a shooting war. What Putin does want, and we are powerless to stop him is not your surrender but your neutrality.

While we want to paint him as mad or unhinged, we ought to reconsider this since he’s beating us (and you) at every turn. His chess game is better than ours, and while a chess Grandmaster might be crazy (See Bobby Fisher) aspersions seem irrelevant when you’re losing—as we are.

Winston Churchill announced that he did not become prime minister of Great Britain to preside over the dismemberment of the British Empire, so neither Putin nor any other possible Russian leader will continue their strategic retreat. At the end of WWII their sphere of influence extended west through half of Germany. Since then they have lost East Germany, Poland and now the west (us!) is nibbling at Ukraine, interfering in their domestic issues, and we’ve even been caught discussing which insurgents to back.

You might understand that were Russia actively destabilizing our immediate neighbors, we might react with threats and force. Oh, yes, we have actually done so in Cuba—though not as well as Putin is playing this.

Dear Ukrainians, we’re willing to stipulate that Putin is a ruthless thug, but he is the expression and embodiment of historical Russian policies and interests. We cannot expect a kinder gentler leader when Putin leaves the stage. Russia will not let its last buffer against the west fall without a fight of some kind. He doesn’t want to own or occupy you for a very simple reason: You are not an asset. You are broke and your oligarchs have broken you. Putin controls the oil and gas—not just to you but also to Germany and much of the European Community. He can choke you and the EU without firing a shot.

His best trick, and the ultimate proof that he is out thinking and outplaying us, is that he can choke you but doesn’t have to bail out your crashed economy. He has manipulated us into promising you 15 billion dollars; money that we can be sure will never reach the people or lessen your poverty. He knows, as we do, that this money also will get stolen.

When the Soviet Union went bankrupt in Afghanistan, we learned nothing and followed them in. They noticed our naïveté. You, Dear Ukraine, are our financial Afghanistan. We will go broke appearing to help. It’s a lose-lose for us. However, Putin is smiling. To him, this is what winning looks like.